First Aid: Diabetic Coma

Imagine the situation: a patient with diabetes mellitus in the street lost consciousness and fell into a coma. For example, the diagnosis did you learn from a note found in his pocket. It seems logical to directly enter the
patient insulin. But, remember, if you can not guess the dose a person can die from brain edema. And your task
– to save a patient’s life before the arrival of ambulance.

People with diabetes are in constant danger of falling into a coma and die, which, incidentally, confirmed the
sad statistics.

Why is this happening?

Insulin, produced by cells of the pancreas, is a unique key for glucose. It allows it to penetrate into the cells and
give them energy. If there is no insulin or not enough, the glucose can not enter the cells and the cells begin to
starve.

Imagine this analogy. You were locked in a room without windows, and the key lost. You want to eat, calls for
help, and help comes. Someone with food trampled under the door, but can not open it. But that’s not all. Time
passes, and in this closed room begin to accumulate waste of life. With good imagination, you can submit this
horror. Stagnant, littered with waste closed space, and amidst all this ugliness is suffering from hunger, thirst and
intoxicated people.

Similarly, feel cells and, if glucose is unable to “open the door.” The fact that glucose is not only a unique carrier
of energy, but also the universal burner all organic waste. When there are no problems with access, glucose
freely gives cells energy, while at the same time and cleans them from the products of their own life.
But since we are talking about a diabetic coma, the insulin, by definition, no. Glucose can not enter the cells and
clean them. So is self-poisoning organism toxic products of metabolism and accumulate in the body such
harmful oxidized products, such as ketone bodies and acetone.

At the same time, the cells require food, and the body responds to the call. Because liver glycogen and glucose
is released, they can not get through the locked door. Since the requirements are repeated and each time being
met, the result in the blood accumulates a huge amount of glucose. Hyperglycemia develops.
But the glucose can not stay in the blood continuously. It is excreted in the urine. In addition, each molecule of
glucose captures with a few molecules of water. This, in turn, leads to dehydration. The skin and mucous
membranes of humans become dry. Appears thirst and dry mouth. Man liters of drinking water and can not
drink. In this case there is such a feature – the number allocated urine is always greater than the number of your
fluids.

When dehydration becomes catastrophic, ie, cells squeezed almost to dryness, the concentration of toxins
increases and the process of self-poisoning organism worse. Number of ketone bodies and acetone in the
blood rises to a level that they are beginning to stand out in the urine and exhaled air. Thus there is a
characteristic smell of pickled apples – the smell of acetone.